by Brenda Novak
“I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ve already been through that. I hope you find someone a lot better than me who—”
She held up a hand. “Stop. I don’t want to hear it. There isn’t anyone better than you.”
Josh would have been flattered had he thought she meant that the way most folks would’ve taken it. But he knew she saw him more as a status symbol than anything else. “You’re a bright, attractive woman, Mary,” he said. “You don’t need me to prove that.”
“Oh, yeah?” She grimaced. “If I’m so bright and attractive, why am I divorced? Why—” Her voice cracked but she sniffled and continued. “Why wasn’t I enough for Glen? Or for you?”
Josh reached out to cover her hand with his. “It wasn’t that you weren’t enough for me, Mary. I think I just had my eye on someone else, someone who’s been part of me for a long time.”
“Rebecca?”
He nodded.
“But everyone’s always thought you didn’t like her!”
“For most my life, I thought so, too.”
“What changed your mind?”
He smiled, remembering all the years he’d known Rebecca growing up. He could still recall the time she’d lost a baby tooth in third grade and had to go see the nurse. And the time she’d found a worm in the schoolyard and chased Monti Blevons the entire recess for grinding it to dust. Then there were the later years, when she slowly shed her tomboy dress for girl stuff. Seeing her in her first formal at Homecoming had taken his breath away. Of course, she was someone else’s date. They’d scowled at each other and brushed past without speaking. But he’d wanted to dance with her. “Truthfully?” he asked.
“Truthfully.”
“I think it was that fight with Buck Miller.”
“In the seventh grade?” Mary said.
Josh nodded, even though he suspected he’d loved Rebecca before that—since the day he’d first seen her and she’d tilted up her sharp little chin and glared down her nose at him.
“It’s pretty hard to compete with giving Buck a bloody nose,” Mary admitted. “I’m not the rough-and-tumble type.”
“Rebecca is a hard act to follow,” Josh agreed. “But don’t get me wrong. There are those who are grateful for that.” He chuckled. “Sometimes I’m one of them.”
“You think you two can make it work?”
“I have no clue,” he said. “Rebecca always seems to make things more difficult than they have to be. But if I have my say, we’re going to try.”
“Well…” She dried her eyes and glanced at the dance floor. “Can I have a last dance?”
* * *
DUNDEE AT LAST. Thank God. Rebecca was so tired she could hardly keep her car on the road. She knew she should probably have gotten a hotel in Boise. But she hadn’t wanted to stay. It was her birthday. She’d arranged to have the day off work—and not so she could sleep in some hotel room by herself. She was hoping Booker might take her out for a late breakfast. And when she’d called to tell her mother about Delaney’s baby, Fiona had insisted she come for the traditional family dinner party, to take place in the late afternoon.
But Josh was the real draw. After everything that had happened, she was anxious to see him again. Being tortured by him, using the same techniques as last night, sounded like a pretty good birthday activity. Receiving some sort of birthday gift from him wouldn’t be bad, either.
Should she call him as soon as she got home? Or, better yet, simply go over and crawl into bed with him? Besides the—
The sight of Josh’s Suburban sitting in the parking lot of the Honky Tonk jerked Rebecca out of her daydreams and sent prickles down her spine. What was Josh doing at the Honky Tonk at two o’clock in the morning? she wondered, throwing on her brakes. It was closing time. He’d been up late last night. And from the looks of the parking lot, he was nearly alone.
Nearly alone? Nearly alone took on a whole new meaning when Rebecca spotted Mary Thornton’s car parked only a stone’s throw away.
Wheeling around, she gave her Firebird more than enough gas and pulled into the lot, spewing gravel as she slid to a sudden stop next to the Suburban. It was Josh’s vehicle, all right. She’d spent too many years being hyper-aware of anything to do with him to mistake the distinctive dents and dings.
She got out, tossing a baleful glance at Mary’s brown Camry, and marched into the Honky Tonk. She could scarcely breathe for the fear squeezing her chest, but anger pulsed through her like a tidal wave, overcoming everything else. She wasn’t about to walk away and pretend she hadn’t seen what she’d seen. Only a coward would refuse to face the truth. And she would never be that kind of coward.
“I go, you go, huh?” she muttered as her blood pressure soared.
The inside of the Honky Tonk looked almost like a different place without all the familiar faces crowding the bar. Bear, the weekend bartender, was busy drying glasses. He jerked his head up when she came in because she’d flung the door so hard it banged against the outside wall, drawing everyone’s attention.
Josh and Mary were on the dance floor, moving slowly to Faith Hill’s “There I’ll Be.” Judging from their delayed response, her presence took a moment to register. When it did, Josh released Mary. “There you are,” he said with a smile as he moved toward her.
“Don’t come near me,” she said, putting out both hands to ward him off. Her voice was higher and louder than she would have liked. If there’d been any chance that their audience might have gone back to whatever they were doing, that was no longer the case. But it was difficult to think about being discreet when she was so furious. “I believed you! I trusted you! I…I almost told you I love you!” she shouted.
Over in the dart area, Billy Joe and Bobby whooped, “Watch out, Josh. She’s not happy, and she’s going to make sure you know it.”
“She’ll be fine once I get her home,” he said calmly, then gave her that cocky grin of his. “You almost told me you love me?”
“No. And I won’t, either. I’m not going home with you. I’m never going home with you again,” she shot back. “I don’t even want you to forgive my debt. I’ll pay you for the stupid Excursion, every cent. Because I don’t want to owe you anything. I don’t even want—” Oof!
The sudden jolt of being tossed over Josh’s shoulder rendered Rebecca incapable of speech, effectively cutting off her recital of what she didn’t want. She’d expected him to argue with her—or apologize and offer some flimsy excuse. He did neither. He simply carried her toward the exit as though this sort of thing happened every day. “Careful, Beck. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she cried. “Put me down!” She started banging on his back and kicking so he’d have to let her go, but he merely secured her feet so she couldn’t hit anything he cared about. Rebecca knew she wasn’t putting much effort into the fight, anyway. She wanted to be in Josh’s arms. She wanted him to convince her that what she’d seen wasn’t what she’d thought.
“Would you look at that,” Billy Joe said in obvious amazement. “I’ve never seen anyone get away with anything with Rebecca.”
Evidently he hadn’t been keeping close track, Rebecca thought. Josh had always gotten the best of her.
“Where are you taking her?” Bobby asked.
“I told you,” Josh responded without bothering to glance back. “Home.”
“Whose home?” Mary asked.
Rebecca managed to look up in time to see her watching them with her mouth agape, eyes round with disbelief.
“Our home,” Josh told her as he paused to shove a chair out of their path.
“Put me down,” Rebecca said again, but her initial anger was dwindling fast. Our home? Our home suggested a lot of earth-shattering possibilities….
“Wow,” she heard Mary murmur as Josh shouldered open the door, a note of envy in her voice. “He never treated me like that.”
“Like what?” Billy Joe asked.
> “Like he loved me,” she replied and the door banged shut.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“YOU HUNGRY?” Josh asked.
Rebecca’s automatic response was no, but when she took a moment to consider, she realized she was actually famished. She’d been so caught up in the birth of Delaney’s little girl that she’d scarcely eaten all day.
“A little,” she admitted.
“What would you like?” Pocketing his keys, he led her through the front door and into his kitchen, where he paused to open the refrigerator.
“Anything.”
“An omelet?”
“Sure.” She sat at the kitchen table while he pulled out the eggs, cheese, onions and mushrooms and carried them to the counter.
“Are we going to talk about what happened tonight?” she asked. After depositing her in the passenger seat of his Suburban, he’d gone around and climbed into the driver’s side, started the engine and headed out of the lot. As an afterthought, she’d asked him to stop and let her out so she could get her car. She didn’t exactly want the entire town to see it sitting at the Honky Tonk in the morning. Past experience had taught her that wasn’t such a good thing.
“There’s nothing to say,” he told her. “You thought something was going on with me and Mary but it wasn’t what it looked like. That’s all.”
“That’s not all.”
“There’s more?”
Rebecca considered all the questions she’d like to ask. There was that little “our home” comment he’d made, and the way he’d carried her out as though he had a right to do so. But probing for his reasons could possibly lead to a very serious discussion that might not end the way she wanted it to. And it was her birthday. Better to save the serious stuff for another time. “I guess not,” she said.
He grinned and started chopping onions.
“You look smug,” she said.
“I’m just thinking.”
“About what?”
“You.”
“Could you elaborate on that?”
“Everyone’s so afraid of setting you off. They don’t know the real you.”
“But you do.”
“I’m beginning to understand a few things.”
“Like…”
“That spiny front you present to the world protects a very soft heart.”
Rebecca wasn’t pleased that his comment made her feel so vulnerable. “And this assumption is based on the fact that I let you get away with what you did tonight?” she asked, folding her arms and leaning away from the table. “I was just too tired to fight. I could’ve made you let me go if I’d really wanted to.”
He chuckled as he cracked the eggs into a bowl, his fork making scraping sounds as he added some salt and started whisking everything together. “More bluster,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“What?”
He threw her a swift glance. “Nothing.”
“Don’t bait me right now,” she said with a scowl. “I just want to relax.”
“Okay, so tell me about Delaney and Conner’s baby.”
The sizzle of the eggs in the pan, along with the smell of the food, was comforting. It felt good to be sitting in Josh’s kitchen, letting him take care of her.
Rebecca covered a yawn, thought about snuggling up with him and drifting into a contented sleep, and some of the tension in her body eased. “It was wonderful. I’ve never seen anything like it, Josh. At times I laughed, and I cried, and then there were moments when I was so worried about Delaney I thought I’d die. For the first time in weeks I wanted a cigarette. But I stuck it out. And then, after the baby was born and I held her in my arms, so much longing swept through me I could hardly—”
At the stunned look on Josh’s face, Rebecca fell silent.
“What?” she said hesitantly.
“You said ‘longing.”’
Rebecca’s cheeks started to burn. She had said longing. In her excitement, she’d forgotten to downplay certain aspects of what she’d experienced.
“You said when you held the baby, so much longing swept through you that…what?” he prodded.
She tried to think of a way to make what she’d said sound plausible in the context of witnessing Conner and Delaney’s baby being born. But longing wasn’t typically an emotion she’d feel at the birth of someone else’s child—unless she wanted a baby of her own.
“That I couldn’t breathe,” she finished. She’d wanted to take things slow with Josh, learn to trust him before exposing any more of her softer side. But her feelings were too strong and too close to the surface to pretend. And she wasn’t good at it, anyway.
He set the pan on the opposite burner, left his spatula on the counter and came over to squat before her. “So you want a baby, Beck?” he asked, resting his elbows on his knees and looking up into her face.
She nodded. Her heartbeat was thudding through her entire body as she anticipated his response and, for some crazy reason, she felt a rush of tears. Swallowing hard, she blinked them back, but the lump in her throat threatened to choke her. She wanted a baby, all right. She wanted Josh’s baby. Somehow it seemed as though a family with Josh Hill was all she’d ever wanted—even when she’d been pouring bleach on his lawn.
“Can you wait till we get married?” he asked, taking both her hands.
“Married?” she echoed in surprise. “We’ve only been together one day.”
“We’ve known each other practically our whole lives. I don’t need any more time than that. Do you?”
“No.” She definitely needed no more time than it would take to say “I do.”
He pulled her slightly forward and kissed the end of her nose. “So you’ll be my wife?”
Because she didn’t trust her voice, Rebecca nodded, wondering if she was going to wake up in the morning and realize this whole conversation had been a dream. But it felt very real when Josh reached up to wipe away a tear that had gotten stuck in her eyelashes, blurring her vision.
“When do you want to have the wedding?” he asked.
She sniffed. What was wrong with her? She cried probably one-tenth as often as most women. She was Rebecca Wells—proud and tough, with a bad-ass reputation. Granted, her reputation protected her on some occasions and plagued her at others. But with Josh her reputation no longer mattered. He didn’t see her the way other people did. Not anymore.
Maybe that was the reason she was crying. She knew he was looking at the real her—and that he actually liked what he saw.
“I guess there isn’t any reason to let all those cookies go to waste,” she said.
“Cookies?”
Too busy figuring out a date, she didn’t explain. “Is three weeks too soon?”
“Not for me. If you want, we can elope tonight.”
“No way,” she said. “My father’s got to see this.”
* * *
WHEN THE TELEPHONE RANG, Rebecca thought it was the buzzer on Hatty’s oven. In her dreams, she kept trying to turn it off, but no matter how many times she twisted the knob, the noise wouldn’t stop. Then, suddenly, silence was restored. She settled herself more comfortably on Josh’s shoulder and was about to sink back into oblivion when a solid knock sounded on the door.
“Josh? Is Rebecca with you?”
It was Mike. Rebecca sat up and shoved a hand through her disheveled hair, then remembered to pull the blankets up to cover herself, in case he decided to enter.
“Yeah, I’m here,” she said.
Their voices finally roused Josh. He stretched and rose to his elbows to squint at Rebecca before scooping her toward him and burying his face in her neck. “What is it?” he mumbled against her skin.
“It’s your brother.”
“Do I have a brother?”
“He doesn’t belong to me,” she said.
“Oh, yeah.” Rolling away, he scrubbed his face with one hand. “What is it?” he called.
“Booker’s on the phone,” Mike said.
Reaching ove
r to the nightstand, Josh grabbed the receiver and handed it to her. “It’s your roommate,” he grumbled.
“Do I detect a little jealousy?” she asked.
“Damn right.”
There wasn’t anything to argue about if he was going to agree with her, so she pulled him down next to her and contented herself with threading her fingers through his hair. It was such a possessive thing to do and so utterly fulfilling….
“Late night, huh, babe?” Booker said as soon as Rebecca answered.
“Yeah. Delaney had her baby.”
“I heard. A little girl. It’s all over town.”
“Already?”
“That surprises you?”
“Not really.”
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Thought I’d better warn you that your family’s looking for you. They’re about to call the highway patrol and they’ll probably follow with the morgues in Boise. They’ve talked to Delaney and know you left the hospital last night. They’re afraid you might’ve ended up in a ditch. And I wasn’t gonna be the one to tell ’em you’re sleeping with Josh.”
“Gotcha.” She let the silky strands of Josh’s hair slip through her fingers again. “The morgues, huh? That’s not good.”
“What’s not good?” Josh murmured.
“My parents think I’ve gone missing.”
“So what are you doing for your birthday?” Booker asked.
Josh kissed her temple and placed a possessive hand on her breast, obviously trying to distract her. “I think we’re going shopping.”
“‘We?”’
“Josh and me.”
“For a birthday present?”
“For a wedding ring.”
“No shit?”
Rebecca smiled, remembering how Josh had called her Mrs. Joshua Hill while he was placing little kisses along her collarbone—and then considerably lower—last night. “No shit. How are things with Katie?”
“Not anywhere as good as they are with you and Josh.”
“You really like her, don’t you?”
